Keynote addresses

Morten Kjaerum is the Director of the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, a position he has held since June 2008. Before joining the FRA, Mr Kjaerum served as the founding Director of the Danish Institute for Human Rights. Over 17 years in top executive roles at Denmark’s national human rights institution, Mr Kjaerum built the institute into an internationally recognised institution. An expert in human rights implementation, Mr Kjaerum has been a member of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and the President of the International Coordination Committee for National Human Rights Institutions, a network coordinating relations between the United Nations and national institutions. Mr Kjaerum has written extensively on issues relating to human rights, in particular on refugee law, the prohibition against racial discrimination and the role of national human rights institutions. [ Read speech ]

Maija Sakslin is the Chairperson of the FRA Management Board and Finland’s Deputy Parliamentary Ombudsman. She is an expert in constitutional and EU law, especially social rights. Previously, Ms Sakslin was a researcher at the Social Insurance Institution in Finland and at the University of Helsinki’s Institute of International Economic Law. She participated as an expert in a number of working groups on reforming the Finnish constitution. She also took part in various EU research projects, among them the Observatory for Migrant workers and Training and reporting on social security coordination. [ Read speech ]

Kinga Göncz is a Hungarian Member of the European Parliament, member of the Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D). Ms Göncz is Vice-Chair of the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE), where she is serving as Rapporteur on the Rights and Citizenship Programme (2014–2020). Prior to this, Ms Göncz held a number of high-level positions in Hungary, including Minister of Foreign Affairs (2006–2009), Minister of Youth, Family and Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities (2004–2006), Minister for Equal Opportunities (June–October 2004) and Parliamentary under-secretary for the Ministry of Health, Social and Family Affairs (2002–2004).

Luis Jimena Quesada serves as President of the Council of Europe’s European Committee of Social Rights. He is also a professor of constitutional law at the University of Valencia in Spain. He has taught at the International Institute of Human Rights in Strasbourg since 1993 and, since 1997, served as a substitute judge at the High Court of Justice of the Administrative Chamber of the Valencia Autonomous Community. Mr Jimena Quesada holds degrees from the Collège Universitaire d’Études Fédéralistes (Aosta, 1990), Europäische Akademie Bayern (Gauting, Munich, 1992) and the lnternational Academy of Constitutional Law (Tunis, 1996). [ Download speech (pdf) ]

Panel debate: Fostering anti-discrimination policies in the EU – tools and measures available to civil society

Raül Romeva i Rueda is a Spanish Member of the European Parliament and Vice-President of the Greens/EFA Group. He is a member of the Committee of Women’s Rights and Gender Equality and the Committee of Fisheries and also serves as a substitute Member of the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs. Prior to his election to the European Parliament in 2004, Mr Rueda worked as a senior analyst and consultant on armed conflict and post-war contexts at the United Nations, lecturing widely on these topics as well as on peace building and post-war rehabilitation. He was also in charge of the UNESCO Education reconstruction programme in Bosnia-Herzegovina, co-ordinated programmes and campaigns for Oxfam Spain and participated in the Spanish Campaign for Arms Control.

Deaglán Ó Briain is Principal in the Irish Department, Ministry of Justice and Equality, where he has responsibility for human rights and equality legislation, including implementation in domestic legislation of EU antidiscrimination directives. Under the Irish Presidency of the Council of the European Union, Mr Ó Briain chairs the Social Questions Working Party for the Article 19 Directive. He is also the FRA National Liaison Officer, acting as a permanent point of contact between the FRA and the Government of Ireland. Mr Ó Briain has served in a number of government departments and previously had responsibility for issues including: Irish language policy, development of programmes for support for local community development, policy inrelation to government funding and support for voluntary activity.

Juan Gonzalez-Mellizo joined the Non-discrimination policies and Roma coordination unit of the Equality Directorate in DG Justice, Freedom and Security in 2010 where he currently works as team leader of non-discrimination policies. He started working in 1998 on European affairs first in the private sector and then for the Spanish public administration. He joined the European Commission in 2004 to work in different areas related to social inclusion. He studied economics and has two Master's degrees in Political Science and Management.

Panel debate: Victims of hate crime: challenges and promising practices for victim support

Joanna Perry is a Hate Crime Officer with the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). Before this she worked as an equality and diversity policy advisor at the Crown Prosecution Service in the United Kingdom, heading the coordination of hate crime policy and performance. She was particularly focused on developing the Service’s policy and performance management structures on disability hate crime. She has published several articles on the topic of hate crime and teaches a regular Masters module on the subject. She has also worked in the voluntary sector as criminal justice police lead at Victim Support in the UK and with the human rights learning difficulties charity, Values Into Action.

Harald Kröger is a Detective Chief Inspector at the Berlin Police Department. Since April 2012 he has served as one of two Liaison Officers for LGBT issues at the Central Office for Crime Prevention. As Liaison Officer, Mr Kröger is responsible for: providing on-going police training on LGBTI persons’ rights and on crime based on homophobic prejudice; evaluating criminal offences against LGBTI; offering guidance on prevention of crime against LGBTI and related police work; assisting with related complaints; and networking with other authorities and NGOs. Mr Kröger began work with the Berlin Police Department in 1998. He is experienced in a variety of criminal investigation fields, especially violent adolescent crime and fraud.

Lisbeth Garly Andersen is a project manager at the Danish Institute for Human Rights. During her 11 years at the Institute, she has spearheaded a number of human rights projects in Denmark and internationally. Ms Andersen is a social anthropologist specialised in rights-based research, with particular expertise in hate crime and non-discrimination. Her main methodology is social fieldwork. Ms Andersen conducted a study on how Danish police handles hate crime and subsequently took charge of police training on hate crime. She has also been involved, in cooperation with the police, in several campaigns to combat hate crime.

Judith Sunderland is a senior Western Europe researcher with the Europe and Central Asia division of Human Rights Watch, focusing on issues related to discrimination and intolerance, migration and asylum policy and counterterrorism. Her recent work has included research and advocacy on: summary returns of asylum seekers and unaccompanied children from Italy to Greece; racist violence in Italy and Greece; police abuse affecting minority youth in France; deaths of migrants and asylum seekers in the Mediterranean; and counterterrorism cooperation with countries that torture. Ms Sunderland previously worked in Human Rights Watch’s women’s rights division, covering Latin America.

Joanna Goodey is Head of the Freedoms and Justice Department at the FRA. Ms Goodey, who holds a PhD in criminology, held lectureships from the mid-1990s in criminology and criminal justice – first at the Law Faculty of the University of Sheffield, and then at the University of Leeds. Subsequently, she worked for two years as a research fellow at the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. Ms Goodey is the author of an academic textbook Victims and Victimology: Research, Policy and Practice (2005), and co-editor, together with A. Crawford, of Integrating a Victim Perspective within Criminal Justice: International Perspectives (2000). She has also published over 30 academic journal articles and book chapters on issues including the criminalisation of migrants, human trafficking and survey research.

Moderator

Henri Nickels is a FRA Programme Manager, responsible for social research. His areas of expertise include: hate crime, media and social representation of minorities, as well as refugees and asylum seekers; Islamophobia; counter-terrorism; research methodologies. He was previously a Research Fellow at the Institute for the Study of European Transformations at London Metropolitan University. Prior to that he worked as a Research Officer at the Department of Politics in the University of Surrey.

Chairs of the meeting

Friso Roscam Abbing is Head of the Communication Department at the FRA, a position he has held since 2009. Prior to this, Mr Roscam Abbing was a Member of the Cabinet of the European Commission Vice-President Jacques Barrot, the Commissioner for Freedom, Security and Justice, after having served from 2004 to 2008 as the spokesman of European Commission Vice President Franco Frattini, the prior Commissioner for Freedom, Security and Justice issues. Between 2000 and 2004, he headed the EU Asylum Policies sector at the European Commission’s DG Justice, Freedom and Security. Before this, he led the EU Office of the European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE, 1994–2000) after starting his career as Head of the Legal Department at the Dutch Refugee Council (1986–1994).

Massimo Toschi is a Programme Manager at the FRA in charge of cooperation with national human rights institutions, equality bodies and civil society (Fundamental Rights Platform). He is also involved in FRA work on violence against women. Previously, Mr Toschi was the Chief of the Child Protection Unit at the United Nations (UN) Peace-Keeping Mission in Haiti (2006–2009) and worked at the Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict (2002–2005). Before joining the UN, Mr Toschi worked at the European Commission and was responsible for the European Initiative for Democracy and Human Rights in Moldova, Belarus, Ukraine and Mongolia. His professional career began with European NGOs in Brussels – he worked at the European Human Rights Foundation, the European Liaison Office Telefono Azzurro ‘Help Line for Children’, and the European Forum for Child Welfare.